2024-02-12T03:40:38Z
Building in Public
Building (or working) in public is the act of making creative works, usually open-source software or other digital media, either implicitly or explicitly in front of an audience. Far from being mere passive consumers of both the work product and the spectacle of watching it being made, the audience gets involved to varying extents. Beyond a project's core, which usually consists of a small team or even one person, there is a much larger group of people making "drive-by" contributions, others suggesing changes, while others still are content to just hang out. Table stakes for this kind of activity consist of a code hosting platform — of which GitHub is by far the most popular — but the infrastructure may extend to chat channels (such as Discord, Slack, or even IRC), or live coding via video stream (e.g. Twitch or YouTube). This subject was treated in detail by Nadia Asparouhova (née Eghbal) in her 2020 book, Working in Public.
Working in Public